White and Gold/Blue and Black Dress?

On 25 February 2015, an image of a striped dress that appeared to be white and gold in color to some viewers, but blue and black to others, began to circulate on the Tumblr social blogging network. As the popularity of the image increased, the debate over what it actually displayed intensified — according to an informal poll, roughly a quarter of the people who viewed the image believed the dress to be blue and black, while three quarters believed it was clearly white and gold:

The picture was initially posted to Tumblr by a 21-year-old singer named Caitlin McNeill, who lives on the tiny Scottish island of Colonsay and noted that the dress shown in the picture was worn at a friend's wedding by the mother of the bride:

The dress was worn by the bride's mother. McNeill and her friends first realized there was something different about the dress when the mother sent her daughter the now-famous photo.

"What happened was two of my close friends were actually getting married and the mother of the bride took a photo of the dress to send to her daughter," McNeill explained. "When my friend showed the dress to her fiancee, they disagreed on the color."

The bride then posted the picture on Facebook and her friends continued to debate the color of the dress.